Organized Money

Of all New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's campaign promises, his plan for government-subsidized grocery stores has resulted in the strongest, and sometimes strangest, ire. Critics have called it bad policy, bad business, and even the tipping point on our slide towards Venezuelan socialist oblivion, oh no!  

Today on the show, we have one of the experts who consulted with the mayor on his grocery plan: Errol Schweizer, grocery...

Kay Sharaf started a Kitchen Tune-Up franchise business to provide for her family. Five years later, it has nearly bankrupted her, and she's fighting back. Today on the show, Kay and Keith Miller of Franchise Advocacy Consulting (who is also a Subway franchise owner), are here to discuss the wild world of franchising. 

Franchise businesses run the gamut from serious, healthy businesses where local and national branches can coex...

Comedian and podcaster Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything, Factually, and so much else, is here to help ruin the Paramount merger, literally! 

Today on the show, we break down the breakdown in the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, as the state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America West lawsuits have led to a pause until next year. We cover the events leading up to this turn, then get Adam's take on the situ...

It’s summer break over here at Organized Money, but don’t worry, we have a great story for you from our friends over at An Arm And A Leg: A show about why healthcare costs so damn much, and what we can do about it. Last year they did a series called The Prescription Drug Playbook, documenting all the ways we get screwed in the marketplace, and we, individually, can make the best of an unfair situation.You’ll meet ...

Last week, the Supreme Court handed down two seemingly contradictory rulings: one, allowing Trump to fire the independent commissioners on the FTC, and the other, protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve from executive whim. To make sense of these two cases, we’re bringing back one of those fired FTC commissioners (and Organized Money MVP) Alvaro Bedoya, host of The Fair Fight with Alvaro and Max.


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Today on Organized Money, a dispatch from Minnesota, one of the most exciting states in terms of regulating corporate power.

Recently, Minnesota passed a bipartisan bill banning prediction markets in the state. Within a day, they were being sued to block the legislation. On the show today, we have Minnesota State Representative Emma Greenman, who introduced the house bill, to discuss it, her work, and what state bodies can d...

One of our favorite guests is back! The writer, thinker, and general polymath, Cory Doctorow is here with a new book and a new episode of Organized Money! 

After a brief detour into mid-century chili recipes, Matt, David, and Cory discuss The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, a "short, provocative guide to what’s good, bad, and stupid about AI". Cory argues that in order to co-exist with AI, we must harness it as ...

This week, we’re continuing a recent Organized Money conversation in order to answer the question: Why is California’s gasoline so damn expensive? Famously, California has higher fuel standards than the rest of the nation, as well as higher gas taxes, but that’s only one part of a much more complex pricing picture. 

Today on the show, we welcome Tai Milder, the inaugural director of an exciting new division wi...

Last month, the veteran journalist Julia Angwin wrote an op-ed, “Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time,” which details the ways in which Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp have become a kind of zombie business: Think Yahoo, Myspace, and AOL after their dot-com peaks. On this episode, we invite Julia on the show to discuss her op-ed and dance on Meta's grave—just a little, because it turns out a dying company can sti...

California is known as a bastion of blue state values, but when you start to look at how the state’s legislative sausage gets made, you start to notice how completely borked America’s most populous regulatory state has become. Today on the show, we have Jamie Court, a consumer advocate and president and chairman of Consumer Watchdog, to break down California’s weirdness and some of his organization's recent work.&...

While David is out on vacation, Matt is joined by Organized Money alum Alvaro Bedoya as co-host this week. He's a former FTC commissioner and host of the new podcast The Fair Fight with Alvaro & Max.The idea for today's show came to us when Lance Lillibridge, an Iowa farmer and past president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, wrote on Facebook: 

"As a farmer, watching the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. merger debate so...

Union steamfitter Dan Osborne nearly pulled off a Senate upset in Nebraska two years ago. Now he's back, facing billionaire heir and former governor Pete Ricketts in one of the quietly critical races for Senate control.

David sat down with Osborne in Omaha to talk about what's changed and what hasn't. They cover the real squeeze on family farmers, why anti-monopoly messaging is starting to resonate with everyday voters, Citizens Uni...

Spirit Airlines is dead, and everyone is pointing fingers: Was it the war in Iran that killed Spirit? Joe Biden's Justice Department? Antitrust regulation? Jet fuel? Lina Khan!?? Today on the show we demystify Spirit's demise with William J. McGee, Senior Fellow for Aviation and Travel at the American Economic Liberties Project. 

William is a long-time consumer advocate in the air travel space and has watched as the deregulatio...

Ashley Keller is a pioneer in getting corporations to pay up. As an attorney and founding partner of the firm Keller Postman, only recently he pioneered an influential mass arbitration strategy, argued a case against Monsanto at the Supreme Court, and is fighting Google on behalf of several states in a major ad tech antitrust case. Keller is also an avowed conservative and originalist. For him, there's no contradiction between figh...

Today on the show Matt and David are joined by Linda Michaels, a psychologist and co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network, to discuss all the creepy ways technology companies are weaseling themselves into your therapist's office.

 From matching services like BetterHelp, to PMC middlemen, and potentially dangerous therapy chatbots, tech companies are seeking to exploit your therapist (and you) by using therapy data for ad...

Yet another consequence of the war in Iran is a looming supply shock in plastics. Plastics, which are derived from oil byproducts, are everywhere, but their origins remain somewhat mysterious to the average consumer. Today on the show we demystify the plastics industry with Beth Gardiner, author of the new book Plastic Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil's Biggest Bet an expose of the industry that underlies mod...

Matt and David are live from a conference room in Chicago to break down the Live Nation Ticketmaster verdict! Live Nation was just found to be an illegal monopoly in a dramatic jury trial which saw the Trump administration drop out of the case with a surprise settlement. The states picked up the baton from there. 

Matt and David cover the decision, the history of Ticketmaster’s tangles with Pearl Jam and the Justice Depar...

On March 17th, the candidate Daniel Biss defeated 15 other democratic challengers in the primary election for Illinois' 9th Congressional District. It was one of the most closely watched in the country, in which Biss, and other candidates, were up against millions of dollars in ad spending from dark money super pacs like "Elect Chicago Women", and "Chicago Progressive Partnership". These vaguely-named pacs were all fronts for AIPAC...